The Impact of Food Insecurity on our Children

April 12, 2022

Every county in the United States is home to people experiencing food insecurity, defined by the USDA as a “household-level economic and social condition of limited or uncertain access to adequate food.” Food-insecure households are those that at times during the year are unable to acquire enough food for one or more household members because they have insufficient money or other resources.

The USDA estimates that 89.5% of U.S. households were food secure throughout 2019—that’s 116.0 million people.  The COVID-19 pandemic put further strain on households already experiencing food hardship, with Feeding America estimating that “42 million people, or 1 in 8 Americans, may experience food insecurity in 2021. This is a slight improvement from 2020 numbers but still represents an enormous burden for millions of children and adults”.

The Impact

Food insecurity has a tremendous impact on all people, but particularly on our most vulnerable population- children.

The nutritional content of a child’s diet affects not only his or her current health, but also his or her physical, mental, and social development, and thus his or her future health and well-being. Food-insecure children experience 2-4 times as many health problems as food-secure children.

Addressing the Need

In our 2021 Project Grant cycle, we awarded $44,800 to non-profit organizations seeking to address food insecurity for children across the state.  There has been a steady incline in the funding requests received that focus on children’s unmet basic needs.

“Though we know our funding cannot support every child’s need across our state, we aim to improve the situation for as many children as we can”, said Snow-Redfern Foundation Grant Committee Chairperson Andrew Hunzeker. “We anticipate having another year of record grant requests addressing basic needs, and we are preparing to provide additional funding support in response”.

The CASA programs (Court Appointed Special Advocates), across Nebraska have plced specific emphasis on how they can help bridge the poverty, food insecurity, and basic needs gap for children.  Many of them have created supplemental programs for this purpose, and rely heavily on private foundations, such as Snow-Redfern, to help keep these programs running.

Our Project Grant cycle will be open from July 1^st to August 1^st, 2022 and applications can be submitted on our website at: Through Nonprofits – Snow-Redfern Foundation (snowredfern.org)

Interested in helping many nonprofits across Nebraska to end food insecurity?  You can give today with the knowledge that we will ensure the programs impacting kids will receive it.